In the mobile and wireless communication, authentication methods are generally used to gain network access. The communication server (either for mobile or wireless) provides accessibility must have a set of processes and protocols to verify user's identity. There is a need of a standard way for verifying user's logon, monitoring user's network usage and customer billing. Currently there are standards and protocols that can fulfill the above criteria for Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) purposes. But some of them are not secure and their performance will not meet 3G mobile communication requirements.
The current mobile and wireless authentication mechanisms employ the usage of Certificates. The Authorization protocols must support some notion of a “charging certificate”. These Certificates being heavy weight in size affect the performance of the Mobile Application. With the conservative standards set by many Institutions chiefly in the mobile banking sector there is a requirement for light weight protocols which help in ensuring optimum performance of mobile applications through wireless media.
Moreover, mobile and wireless devices, like smart phones, PDAs, cellular phones and Remote control systems, play an increasingly important role in the digital environment. The pervasive use of mobile and wireless devices brings new security and privacy risks and with the extensive use of mobile devices consumers continuously leave traces of their identities and transactions, sometimes even by just carrying the devices around in their pockets. Since providing true privacy is hard as hiding identity information is irrelevant as long as some other linkable information is associated with the messages, the usage of a light weight protocol will help provide effective solutions to a majority of mobile and wireless applications.